Medical treatment utilizing a variety of electronic equipment is becoming increasingly popular among physicians and their patients. Typically, the parameters of such treatment are prescribed by a physician, written onto a patient's chart and then implemented, either with one or a plurality of treatments, by a medical technician operating the treating equipment. At any stage of this process, a human error or any other mistake is possible which may be detrimental to the patient's health. To avoid the possibility of such error, the present system allows a technician or the physician to store data related to the patient and the prescribed treatment plan onto a Patient Protocol Card (PPC). Use of the PPC conveys the treatment data to the electronic equipment providing or controlling the medical procedure and to the actual treatment apparatus. If more than one treatment-session is prescribed, the PPC will monitor and control the apparatus to ensure that the patient does not receive too frequent treatments or non-prescribed treatments or parameters. The treatment protocol is coordinated to the patient's identity to ensure accuracy and eliminate potential health risks.
The present invention contemplates three versions of the PPC: a clinician card; a patient card; and a physician card. The clinician card initializes the treatment unit to begin the prescribed medical procedure. The patient card, intended to be inserted either after the clinician card or in a separate reader slot, may contain the patient's name, the specific, prescribed treatment protocol (total time duration of each treatment, parameters of each treatment, e.g., H.sub.2, time-on, time-off, intensity; frequency and total number of treatments, etc.), and the then applicable treatment number. The physician card overrides the patient and/or clinician card and allows the system to be operated in a totally manual mode, i.e., all parameters may be hand-adjusted using the equipment controls. All settings of the equipment, including the treatment protocol, are available for adjustment when the physician card is inserted.